It may be hard for you to remember, but Percy Harvin once played for the Minnesota Vikings in 2012. It's true. He actually was doing pretty super, as well. He was being talked about heavily as an early MVP candidate in the NFL (sorry dude, it ended up going to Adrian Peterson instead!), and he was key in helping a young team jump out to an early, and surprising, 5-4 record. It was 4-1 at one time and looked a lot better though.
And now some of you are foaming at the mouth to trade him. But don't be so quick to work that trade machine moron fan, because despite playing in only eight full games (like eight and a half, if you count his partially played, injury filled game against Seattle in 2012), Percy Harvin still clocked in as the 14th most valuable receiver in the league in 2012 when using adjusted advanced metrics. 14th best receiver in the league, played in only eight games. #HashtagSuckMyDick
Don't you feel like a monkey's butthole now.
The advanced numbers we reference are from a formula put together on a website called FootballPerspective.com. Granted, it shouldn't be taken as the golden trophy of football statistics, but the formula he uses does make some sense. It adjusts to properly value receptions, receiving yards, and touchdowns during the regular season, taking into account team pass attempts, importance of first down receptions, scoring, and more, then assigns an overall value to those numbers and the player. It's smart stuff for a moron sport! Read more of it there, because to hell if I'm breaking out my abacus to teach it to you.
Regardless, using this formula we find that Brandon Marshall, Andre Johnson, and Calvin Johnson were credited as the three players with the most valuable receiving seasons for their team in 2012. Further down the list though, at the aforementioned 14 spot, we find Mr. Troublemaker himself Percy Harvin, as having a valuable year to his team as well despite only playing in those eight to nine games. It ends up that his value in limited game time was more so than an entire season's worth of Eric Decker, Julio Jones, Dwayne Bowe, Sidney Rice, and many others that you assholes are probably hoping the Vikings trade Harvin for.
And this isn't even taking into account his rushing and returning impact.
This performance from Harvin is actually such an outlier, that the author wrote a special excerpt about Percy Harvin to explain just how bat **** crazy this is:
You might notice that Minnesota’s Percy Harvin ranks 14th in value added. Harvin only played in 9 games, but he ranked 3rd in ACY/Team Attempt. For players who played in fewer than 16 games (during the 16 game era), I used a pro-rated number of team attempts for those players. Minnesota had 515 pass attempts last year, so we assume that they threw 56% (9/16) of their passes in the games Harvin was active. Therefore, in the team attempts column for Harvin, he’s credited with 290 team attempts. Of course, Harvin is also then only credited for being above average for 290 plays, too.
He tries to explain how he had to adjust for the lack of playing time for Harvin, but the fact that even with adjusted numbers, Harvin had an incredible impact for the Vikings in the games he played. AND YOU WANT TO TRADE HIM?!
My other favorite part is how Vikings fans who want to trade Harvin claim the team was so much better without him. Ponder did better, Peterson ran better, the team won better, the cheerleaders were more attractive, any number of idiot excuses people will come up with. That's all cute until you start using things like FACTS to show how dumb it is. For instance, data that reader Rob sent on recently ...
Christian Ponder's passing statistics in games which Percy Harvin played:
Comp
Att
Pct
Yds
Avg
TD
Int
Sck
SckY
Rate
182
284
64%
1806
6.4
10
8
23
109
78.3
Christian Ponder's passing statistics in games which Percy Harvin DID NOT play:
Comp
Att
Pct
Yds
Avg
TD
Int
Sck
SckY
Rate
118
199
59%
1129
5.7
8
4
9
75
61.6
Let's see ... Yeah, worse it pretty much every meaningful stat. I guess he threw less interceptions in the final seven games, so we'll give you that one. And the Vikings record was 5-4 in games Percy played in verses 5-2 in games which he didn't, but that's what happens when you are comparing odd number of games as well. Either way you slice it though, losing Ponder didn't exactly make Ponder or the team better than some jackanapes would have you believe. And apparently Ponder doesn't think so either, as he said recently he hopes Percy isn't traded this offseason.
So call us stupid. Say our numbers don't prove God doesn't exist. Keep thinking the Earth is flat and the Chupacabra isn't Lindsey Lohan. You'll look real stupid when Percy ends up killing it for another team you've forced him to be traded to. But don't come ******** to me about it. Smart people here know how awesome he is, and we've been wasting our breath trying to tell you otherwise. We are doing God's work, I tell you.
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